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Sunday, 13 November 2016

I hope you are well! Thank you for stopping by today and many thanks for sharing your art with us. We're here to announce the start of our new challenge. This time we want you to join us creating Mail Art.

You will see from the DT inspiration that we all interpreted the theme a little bit differently and that's good! Wouldn't be boring if all worked the same way? In general, you might be familiar with Mail Art, but if you don't know what it is when you decorate an envelope or packaging to send to your family or friend. You can doodle, draw, colour-in, glue on embellishments etc... and as we are a mixed media challenge blog we would like to see mixed media looking projects.

So here are our makes for the challenge. I hope you like what you see and will feel inspired to try to create your own Mail Art...

I've created an art journal layout where I tried to embrace the feminine look of the Eiffel tower with masculine colours, shapes and stamps. It was an additional challenge I set up for myself and had fun completing it.

I am a real fan of Pringles chips, this way I have many empty cans in my scraproom, because I really like decorating them. This was a perfect choice for the base of my mail art project. It reminds me of the old post boxes and vintage time capsules. You can hide any secret messages inside the can. I would be very happy if someone suprise me with a love letter in this kind of packaging. Would you? :)

For the first step I covered the can with 3 layers of white gesso, what followed some violet mist, crackling paste and stencil patters made with modelling paste. After that I started to decorate with different kind of papers that are connected to mailing and post. For the final step I used mica flakes as an embellishment and purple stamps in different pattern.

We all look forward to seeing your makes! I will be back to announce the winner of our last challenge soon so stay tuned. Also, just so you know a new challenge will always go live at 8pm on a 2nd Sunday or a month. 2pm was just a bit too early when you all want to spend time with the family or have a siesta after your Sunday roast :)

I do hope that you can join this challenge and give yourself a chance to win £20 voucher from our sponsor That's Crafty!

Monday, 7 November 2016

I have been crafting now for about 8 years, I am still trying to find my 'style'. Mixed Media I find fascinating as there is no wrong or right way. I get great joy from experimenting with paints, inks, stamps and using different mark making tools. Taking part in challenges on various blogs is very inspirational, everyone I have come across have been very helpful and willing to share their knowledge.

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My project came about from a bucket of rusty metal that we have either found on the land, or has been dug up by our pig Fatty. I had an idea that I wanted to create an alternative picture frame as I had this smashing picture of Fatty.

The substrate for this was an old piece of wood, I think it was originally part of a window frame. I altered the picture of Fatty by adding some Deco Art Media Crackle Glaze with a painting knife. This created different sizes of cracks. I rubbed over some Burnt Umber acrylic paint to try and highlight the cracks.

I collected several pieces from my 'found' bucket and spent a couple of weeks to arrange them into place. The bent nails are really handy as we will be able to 'hang' things from them. The feather came from one of our cockerels!!

This 'picture' is now hanging pride of place in our hallway!!

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Wow! What an original project! Absolutely love the fact you used authentic pieces in your project. Thank you so much for sharing your work with us, Bryan. We hope to see you around!

There's plenty of time to create something amazing for our challenge and join HERE. You have time until 10th November. Good luck!

Tuesday, 1 November 2016

Have you heard of the new Mixed Up magazine? Some of you probably have and for those who have not, Mixed Up is a new digital and interactive magazine packed with mixed media inspiration.

What does 'interactive' mean? Well that's a whole lot of cool at a click of a finger. When you subscribe or purchase an issue you will be able to list through the pages on your phone, tablet or on a computer. Wherever you see a 'play' button you can watch a video. Where you see a row of dots you will be able to list through images. It's great! The first October issue came with 86 pages, each filled with tutorials, images of works of very talented mixed media artists and crafters, freebies, giveaways and more!

I was really looking forward to this day as I knew there would be another November issue ready for me to enjoy!

Katy Leitch is the editor of this wonderful magazine and talking about giveaways, she very kindly agreed to giveaway not one, but TWO FREE copies of the November issue via our blog! How to win...

It's simple... 3 simple steps... I will share this post on our facebook as well. All you need to do is to leave a comment below this blog post and then hop over to Facebook, share my post and leave a comment there as well. I will then select two winners using the random number selector and will announce here and again on Facebook in 10 days! So hurry, don't hesitate and enter so you can enjoy reading it too! Good luck!

Thank you, Katy, and all the best for the future! Looking forward to more of the mixed media goodness!